Take the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL/MariaDB for example.
For performance (and likely other) reasons, this file only grows. It never shrinks... it will only go to 0 or grow.
The DB (or individual tables, depending on config) have to be truncated/emptied to reclaim those blocks.
Stop it uncleanly and there's a good chance you'll have to sacrifice a considerable amount of the data just to get the engine to start
This and countless other things have to make consistency trade-offs. While everything could be written to only operate atomically, it will also slow to a crawl.
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Totally, it's certifiably untrue!
Take the InnoDB storage engine in MySQL/MariaDB for example.
For performance (and likely other) reasons, this file only grows. It never shrinks... it will only go to 0 or grow.
The DB (or individual tables, depending on config) have to be truncated/emptied to reclaim those blocks.
Stop it uncleanly and there's a good chance you'll have to sacrifice a considerable amount of the data just to get the engine to start
This and countless other things have to make consistency trade-offs. While everything could be written to only operate atomically, it will also slow to a crawl.